Ballet Turnout Quotes

It occurred to me that we now as a culture, as a people have legitimately become the progeny of the Digital Age. Ostensibly, we subsist within a dehumanized frontier--a computational, compartmentalized, mathematized collectivist-grid. Metrics have prohibitively supplanted ethics. Alternately, the authentic aesthetic experience has been sacrificed and transposed by the new breed of evangelicals: the purveyors of the advertising industry. Thus the symbolic euphoria induced by the infomercial is celebrated as the new Delphic Oracle. Alas, we've transitioned from a carbon-based life form into an information-based, bio-mechanical, heuristically deprived and depleted entity best described as "a self-balancing 28-jointed adaptor-based biped, an electro-chemical reduction plant integral with segregated stowages of special energy extracts." Consequently, we exist under the tyranny of hyper-specialization, which dislodges and disposes our sense of logic, proportion and humanity from both our cognitive and synaptic ballet. ~ Albert Bifarelli

They had extemporized a verse made up of two insults about matters over which the victim had no control: the color of her skin and speculations on the sleeping habits of an adult, widely fitting in its incoherence. That they themselves were black, or that their own father had similarly relaxed habits was irrelevant. It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult it's teeth. They seem to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had burned for ages in the hollows of their minds - cooled - and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming whatever was in its path. They danced a macabre ballet around the victim, whom, for their own sake, they were prepared to sacrifice to the flaming pit. ~ Toni Morrison

And what would be great numbers in a Broadway show are now on stage of the New York City Ballet. ~ John Guare

I think all dancers are control freaks a bit. We just want to be in control of ourselves and our bodies. That's just what the ballet structure, I think, kind of puts inside of you. ~ Misty Copeland

When I've done gymnastics, ballet or soccer - I was always trying to be the best. I'm really driven. Really driven. ~ Chloe Grace Moretz

I dreamt of becoming a ballet dancer. I studied with the Royal Academy of London for 11 years, and that did not pan out, but my love for being on stage was born there. And then, I actually went to drama school in Paris, France. That's where it first started. ~ Diane Kruger

I've been dancing my entire life. Jazz, hip hop, ballet. And then there's tap dancing. I love to tap. ~ Emily VanCamp

Judith Rey watches the young woman. Once upon a time, I had a baby daughter. I dressed her in frilly frocks, enrolled her for ballet classes, and sent her to horse-riding camp five summers in a row. But look at her. She turned into Lester anyway. She kisses Luisa's forehead. Luisa frowns, suspiciously, like a teenager. What? ~ David Mitchell

Baseball is an art! A drama! A ballet without music! Let us give it a Greek chorus! ~ Deborah Wiles

Once you become a professional, to get through a ballet like 'Swan Lake' - four acts as the lead, changing character - the perseverance is incredible. It takes a lot to make it through and keep the same energy throughout the entire performance. ~ Misty Copeland

You consider me for a moment, perhaps balancing the weight of your fear against the loneliness you will later feel in your room if you do not speak now ~ Guy Mankowski

My dancing days are past. ~ Philip Massinger

I should never conclude were I to speak to you of all the misfortunes which have their origin in the faulty carriage of the body. All these defects, mortifying for those who have contracted them, cannot be remedied except in their early stages. A habit born in childhood is strengthened in youth, becomes deeply rooted in adulthood and is incurable in old age. ~ Jean-Georges Noverre

The Opera ghost really existed. He was not, as was long believed, a
creature of the imagination of the artists, the superstition of the
managers, or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the
young ladies of the ballet, their mothers, the box-keepers, the
cloak-room attendants or the concierge. Yes, he existed in flesh and
blood, although he assumed the complete appearance of a real phantom;
that is to say, of a spectral shade. ~ Gaston Leroux

When you are confronted with an opera, you have to keep an eye on everything: the musicians, the chorus, the ballet, the singers, the staging. ~ Placido Domingo

I never went to a ballet until I was 45 years old. I don't know why. ~ Robert Caro

He was a punk, she did ballet. What more can I say. ~ Avril Lavigne

Coming near him like a ballet dancer she took a leap towards him, and he, frightened by her vehemence, and fearing that she would crash against him, instinctively became absolutely rigid, and she felt herself embracing a statue. ~ Anais Nin

There are those who dance the notes, and those who dance the music. ~ Eva Ibbotson

In 1998, Vanity Fair asked me to write a big piece for them on the 50th anniversary of the New York City Ballet. My life, to a great extent, had been spent at and with the New York City Ballet, and I decided to try it. It was very scary, writing about something I loved so much and had such strong opinions about. ~ Robert Gottlieb

Poetry that tames language into tight structures and yet manages to move us comes off as a feat, paralleling ballet or athletic talent in harnessing craft to beauty. When poetry is based on a less rigorous, more impressionistic definition of craft, its appeal depends more on whether one happens to be individually constituted to "get it" for various reasons. The audience narrows: poetry becomes more like tai chi than baseball. ~ John McWhorter

I toured the Middle Eastern countries with the ballet. ~ Leslie Caron

Classic Ballet,

Keep away, keep building your creaky fairy castles, keep cloning clones and meaningless manners, hang on to your beanstalk ballerinas and their midget male shadows, run yourself out of business with your tons of froufrou and costly clattery toe shoes that ruin all chances for illusions of lightness, keep on crowding the minds of blind balletomanes who prefer dainty poses to the eloquent strength of momentum, who have forgotten or never known the manings of gesture, who would nod their noses to barefoot embargos ("so grab me" spelt backwards). Continue to repolish your stiff technique and to ignore a public that hungers for something other than a bag of tricks and the empty-headedness of surface patterns.

Just keep it up, keep imitating yourself, and, , go grow your own dance makers. Come on, don't keep trying to filter modern ones through your so-safe extablishment. We're to be seen undiluted, undistorted, not absorbed by your hollow world like blood into a sponge.

Yours truly,
A Different Leaf on Our Family Tree ~ Paul Taylor

There's an opera out on the turnpike, there's a ballet being fought out in the alley. ~ Bruce Springsteen

If American women increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts in programs benefiting women and children. ~ Coretta Scott King

It'd be very difficult to cast me as a ballet dancer. Everybody is, in some sense, controlled by their size and their gender. I'm not going to be allowed to play the part that Denzel Washington plays. ~ Brian Dennehy

The cat crossed the street daintily, pointing his feet like a ballet dancer, lifting them high as if his feet were too good for the pavement. ~ Vera Caspary

With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself. ~ Marina Abramovic

I had seen the ballet of 'Swan Lake' as a child but it was as an adult, when I saw a production featuring Erik Bruhn, that I first noticed how significant a part the ever-present threat of violence played. This juxtaposition of great beauty and grace with a backdrop of pure evil stayed with me for years. ~ Walter Dean Myers

Ballet needs figures that people can recognize and relate to. People don't know ballet dancers as well as they know other artists. ~ David Hallberg

When you see the extent to which people try, like the tremors of a ballet dancer, or the intensity of a pianist, or a mural containing the details of tiny little people making up the background-- you see the vulnerable extension of our private selves. There is an element inside us and it wavers between beauty and madness. You know it when you see it, like a hyperactive atom bouncing in a tube. It is like trying, really trying, and when we do, we are in our most honest forms. When we reach, we expose the contents of the human spirit. The more often we see it spill, the more encouraged we are to go further. And we can go further than others, in joyous competition. After all, it is called the human race, no? ~ Karl Kristian Flores

I have a sister who is a dancer and dance teacher. We grew up dancing together. I wanted to become a ballerina when I was a kid, so she and I were always at ballet conservatories and going to school with our hair in buns. ~ Mary Elizabeth Winstead

The abuse of the best things is always detrimental. ~ Jean-Georges Noverre

The first good player I watched as a kid was Joe DiMaggio, and that was like ballet. Since then, I played sandlot and college ball and came to understand how difficult it can be. ~ Mario Cuomo

The state of least excitation of consciousness is the field of all possibilities. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

When you can't follow a ballet's action, you can always read the program notes. ~ Robert Gottlieb

I wanted to be a male ballet dancer. ~ Scott Thompson

The flowing movements and relaxing music softens the sense and release the soul. This way my students not only enjoy moving their bodies with ease, but they also have the satisfaction of knowing that they can benefit from this Art for as long as they shall live (that I presume will be much longer than the expected if they continue on their routine of practicing my "BalletTao") At my primary school, a colleague was reading a text out loud when he kicked this word: Ballet, which is pronounced with a soundless T. He hesitated and then read: Ballet accentuating the T in the end. It sounded like: Ballet-Chi. Who would guess that one day I would accept this as the correct way to use this word?"
The Dao Workbook Illustrated ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

I used to get so comfortable running the hurdles, I was just like a ballet dancer going out there and going through the routines. ~ Rod Milburn

It is not a question of skimming the surface of the art, it must be probed to its depths, for to seize upon superficial things only is to degenerate into mediocrity and obscurity. ~ Jean-Georges Noverre

Ballet Hispanico is a mixture of ethnic, ballet, social, jazz - you name it, it's doing it. The company has been going strong for more than 20 years, and you can see why: It may not be refined, but it's full of beans. ~ Robert Gottlieb

And it is always Easter Sunday at the New York City Ballet. It is always coming back to life. Not even coming back to life - it lives in the constant present. ~ John Guare

It is vain for Mr. McCabe to say that a ballet is a part of him. He should be part of a ballet, or else he is only part of a man. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Culture in America and everywhere else comes from the suffering, from those who don't want the old ways. They want to bring in the new, whether it's the ballet, when it started, or Shakespeare. ~ Russell Simmons

I have been curious about the mind and body for as long as I can remember. I was a gymnast, a ballet dancer, and a philosophy and physical therapy major. Following the thread of curiosity about mind and body, I took my first yoga class in 1980 and knew from the start that it would be a lifelong passion. ~ Rodney Yee

...It Isn't actually much of an encouragement to me to read the stories about Jesus. I might as well take encouragement from watching a great athlete run a four-minute mile. Sure, it's a fine sight, but at my age and with my weight I would be lucky to do a mile in 10 minutes, let alone four. I can watch a ballet dancer on stage with great delight, not because I can copy him, but precisely because I know I can't. ~ N. T. Wright

The whole Esther Williams of it all. The ostrich ballet. Like pirouetting feather dusters; their paddle feet in fourth position. ~ Durga Chew-Bose

I think you still have a problem here when you're going and you're looking not just that Trump is winning, but he's winning in a broad swath of voters. It's not just that he's got this one lane, oh, he only wins when there's low turnout, he only wins when conservatives, he only wins in these kinds of states. He wins enough across a broad array. ~ Amy Walter

Ballet is the fairies baseball. ~ Oscar Levant